You Are Not a Servant Leader if . . .

Some of you I am sure are familiar with the classic comedy routine and series of books by Jeff Foxworthy called You Might Be A Redneck If . . . . Well, we’re going to do something a bit similar over the next few weeks, but about servant leadership. Welcome to, You’re Not A Servant Leader If . . .

You’re not a servant leader if . . .

• You think that active listening is doing stuff while you listen
• Your focus is always on profit, and not people
• You confuse empathy with sympathy
• You think EGO is good because it stands for Extremely Gifted One
• Your idea of developing your people is to give them more tasks - at the same rate of pay
• You believe no one but you can be trusted to make your business successful
• You think employee engagement means telling your employees what to do
• You believe that, like children, employees should be seen and not heard
• You love the terms Human Resources and Human Assets
• You think love has no place in the business world

Let's focus on the first bullet today:

We’ve all been there. Your leader, sitting at his or her desk, multitasking while you try to talk to them. As you notice that they are not paying attention, you stop your talking. After several seconds, your leader stops what they are doing, looks at you and says, “Keep talking. I’m listening,” and then continues to multitask. Infuriating. Rude. The antithesis of a servant leader.